About Us

About Our Funeral Home and Our Commitment to You

A Story of Pride, Strength and Determination.

Doretha Combre defied the odds. A young black woman. A widowed mother of six small children. No income. Yet she managed to obtain higher education for all six children and was a prime mover in enrolling the first black students at McNeese State University in 1954. She is also remembered as an energetic visionary who was unafraid of opposition, who believed in her people and who was committed to the cause of better education.

It was tragedy that brought this young woman into the limelight – her husband, Dr. T.A. Combre. Died at the age of 45 of tuberculosis. Theophile A. Combre was born to Alfred and Josephine Hamilton Combre in Hahnville. One of seven children, he came into the world in 1892 at the time when it was next to impossible for a young black to get any kid of education in Louisiana, let alone a college degree. But Combre managed to get an education at a black college in New Orleans called Strait, which later became Dillard University. He worked his way through Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tenn., the second black medical college in the nation which opened just 11 years after the Civil War ended. At that time medical students were required to have at least three years and about 5,000 hours of lectures, clinics, laboratory work and recitations.

After graduation he set up practice in Oakdale around 1919. He married Doretha Dardenne, a native of Rosedale, who he’d met and fallen in love with while she was attending college in New Orleans. They started their first home and began his first practice, staying in Oakdale for seven years before moving to Lake Charles seven years later, in 1926.

The Combres settled on the corner of Enterprise Boulevard and Mill Street. In 1926, the boulevard was just a wide muddy street, with mostly white residents. Combre’s time in Lake Charles and on the great boulevard was limited. He lived only 11 years before the dreaded tuberculosis took its deadly toll in 1937. Combre’s death left heartache to the whole community. In those few short years he had become a highly respected physician by blacks and whites alike. From this loss, pride, strength and determination rose.

Now under the management of Marcus Combre, Combre Funeral Home is one of the most prominent, esteemed companies in Louisiana.